I think we’re being a bit unfair to Hillary. I wouldn’t say she is charismatic, but I don’t think is unusual for a charisma deficiency. I enjoy hearing her talk even when I know she’s pandering (which is nearly all the time), which to me is an indicator of higher than normal charisma.
It would be more accurate to say she’s uninspiring. Candidates of destiny always are, though perhaps my view would be different if I was female.
My wife absolutely sees her as inspiring.
I don’t so much. Though I will say I don’t think the most “inspiring” candidates are going to actually be able to do half the stuff they’re talking about… In the long run I kind of prefer realism.
You mentioned pandering. I agree HRC is quite the pandered, but when was the last time there was a candidate who DIDN’T pander, pretty much all the time? We certainly don’t have anybody like that running this time around…
Well, there’s pandering and then there’s pandering. Republicans are usually more blatant about it (see Ted Cruz inviting Iowans on a hog hunt), but Hillary is not as subtle about it as Obama was, to use one example.
I wholeheartedly agree with this response.
GWB was a disaster, but I won’t bash him for being uncharismatic. His charisma is pretty much all he had against Gore and that was enough. He was folksy and unpretentious, even though he was wildly unqualified.
I would say the same for GHWB, but in a different way. He was nerdy, and lacked gravitas severely, but he wasn’t abrasive in any way. The most negative comments about him at he time were that he was wishy-washy and generally out of touch, but he wasn’t unlikable or tactless.
Carter was very likable, he was the classic “have a beer with the guy” nominee. Again, some of his southern politeness made him seem a bit weak or simple, but he didn’t turn people off. He didn’t inspire confidence but that’s not the the same as charisma.
Ford was a big dumb jock and at the time that was really a favorable thing. I was too young to remember anything firsthand, but he’s not known for being abrasive or disingenuous. Mostly just out of his depth.
Nixon was before my time, but I’d say he’s the closest they come. Maybe it was just that he was compared to JFK, but everything I’ve read and all the documentaries over the years paint him as a really coarse person and a bully. Very competent, maybe to a fault, and paranoid in the end, but he rubbed people the wrong way very much like Hilary.
Seriously? Sanders and Paul, on opposite ends of the spectrum, are pretty much defined by their unwillingness to pander. These are two of the least panderous candidates I can remember. Feel free to disagree with them, but they absolutely don’t pander to the lowest common denominator or change their rhetoric for the audience.
Wow, I laughed myself silly over that anaology. This is my first post. I hope to find more gems like that on this forum.
I was actually wondering where I’d keep that quote for referencing later.
Probably in the OP I should have put uncharismatic, and unlikable and perhaps added “uninspiring”. I am not basing this on personal opinion. I did not like GWM, I disliked him much more than I dislike Hillary - however, there just seems to be a palpable lack of enthusiasm even among her supporters (which are many) that is a little unusual to me.
I don’t think it’s unusual. Nobody was very excited about Gore or Kerry either. I think you’ve just been jaded because Obama was so well-liked by his supporters.
He certainly offered an appeal to nostalgia for fans of Mad Magazine.
Stranger
And yet people are coming back from the grave in order to talk about how much everyone hates Ted Cruz.
I think this is the wrong question. A better question would be “When, in a general election, has the less charismatic candidate triumphed?” The answers are not encouraging:
Obama was more charismatic than McCain and much more charismatic than Romney. He won both times.
Bush II may not have been particularly charismatic, but he was far more charismatic than Kerry and Gore. He won both times.
Clinton was much more charismatic than Bush I and Dole. He won both times.
Bush I vs Dukakis is debatable, but even if we grant that Bush I was an outlier, it doesn’t really matter much because when we go back further we see…
…Reagan was much more charismatic than Mondale and Carter. He won both times.
Carter was more charismatic than Ford. He won.
I don’t know enough about earlier candidates to offer an opinion one way or the other. However, I do know that, initially, the Nixon vs Kennedy race was a close-run thing…until Nixon debated Kennedy on TV.
Charisma is a huge factor in elections, so much so that if it came down to Hillary vs Trump, I wouldn’t necessarily count Trump out. He may have no sensible policies, no diplomacy, no sensitivity, no experience of Government, and so little brains he has to whistle when he goes to the toilet to remind himself which end to shit through, but he has charisma to burn. That’s undeniable. Hillary Clinton, if the debates I’ve seen are anything to go by, has less personality than an Excel spreadsheet. I don’t think that alone will be enough to undo her, but, when combined with her other negatives, it might just be the deciding factor, especially against an unusually charismatic character like Trump.
I think we have decidedly different ideas of what “charisma” means. Trump is interesting. But charismatic? Really? He’s been a national joke for decades, outside a relatively small number of business and property fanboys. His toupee is more famous than he is.
I agree with this, I think it is a very good point. And when you look at a lot of these match ups the odds seemed very long. I remember when Bill Clinton was running the first time, when the news about his affair came out it was shocking, SHOCKING!
As a non-American, I don’t really have much of an opinion politically about Clinton or Trump. I know nothing about Clinton’s politics and only what makes the Canadian news about Trump.
My take is that Clinton is not particularly charismatic but Trump is actually offensive. He just seems like an complete asshole. Pompous, arrogant, know-it-all, cold, and rather socially awkward I would guess. Would you actually want to hang out with Donald Trump? Go out for beers with him? Go fishing with him? There’s no possible way his wife is married to him for any other reason than the money. I simply cannot believe anyone would consider voting for him.
Again, I have no dog in this fight. I have friends whose politics I don’t agree with. I have had friends whose political opinions are diametrically opposed to mine. We can still be friends, but we just don’t talk about politics. But I can tell you, from what I’ve seen on TV, I would never be friends with Donald Trump. I don’t think my political leanings line up much with George W. Bush’s, but I would totally go fishing with that dude.
I don’t know, I think he is a character for sure, but a national joke? He is a joke in specific circles certainly, but I never saw it as a universal thing. Fact of the matter is, we live in such a culturally divided country that anyone who is popular with one group people is going to be positively hated and reviled by another group.
Charismatic is not the same thing as likeable, or inspiring. Lots of charismatic people are not particularly likeable, just ask Charles Manson. And lots of likeable people are not particularly charismatic.
So I can understand how some people might think GWB was likeable, from a certain point of view. That doesn’t make him charismatic.
He only needed to be more charismatic than Al Gore and the guy that looks like a tree.
Oh, I’m very serious.
Well, to be fair, I don’t know a lot about what Paul does or doesn’t do–he’s kind of an asterisk at this point–so you could be right about him.
But Sanders, IMHO, is along with Trump the King of Pander. You’re right that he doesn’t change his message or his rhetoric depending on his audience, but Sanders absolutely DOES reach for the “lowest common denominator” in his campaigning. With the one exception of guns, Sanders (like Trump) is constantly reframing complicated issues in simplistic terms and (like Trump) promising to do things at no cost to the people he’s trying to attract. Sanders (like Trump) does not see shades of gray; neither does he (like Trump) seem to want people to think deeply about his proposals.
Trump: We’ll build a wall at the Mexican border. And we’ll make Mexico pay for it.
Sanders: We’ll make public colleges tuition-free. And we’ll make Wall Street pay for it.
In their effect, of course, the two promises are very different. But in the rhetoric being used, they’re quite similar. “I will promise you something that you (my voters) will REALLY LIKE, and I’ll make sure that instituting it won’t hurt you in ANY WAY AT ALL. The pain will fall exclusively on people that I know damn well that you don’t like.” Both formulations are overly simplistic, both make promises that are red meat for a particular audience, both are…pandering.
(As for agreeing/disagreeing, I don’t agree in any way whatsoever with building a wall at the border, regardless of who pays for it. On the whole, I do agree with making public colleges tuition-free; but I don’t think it will solve all the problems Sanders thinks it will, I don’t think there is the slightest chance that “Wall Street” will pay for it, and I don’t think that the country is well served by reducing a complex question to an applause line. This is not about agreeing or disagreeing with a candidate for political reasons; it’s about how appeals to voters are couched.)
I think Trump is charismatic insofar as he has that nebulous quality of “presence”. I get the feeling it would be hard to ignore someone like Donald Trump, even if he was just standing in the corner of a room and not saying anything. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, just doesn’t strike me as having very much presence at all.
One other thing which I think contributes strongly to my impression of Trump as a charismatic man, is that when he gives a speech it’s abundantly clear that he’s really enjoying himself. Every gesture, every inflection positively screams “I’m loving this!”. He may be loving it because he’s a gigantic narcissist, but that doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that he’s full of positive energy, and the crowds pick up on that. Clinton just doesn’t have the same sort of energy. In speeches, Trump is always totally at ease, while Clinton seems to veer between being moderately comfortable and vaguely nervous.
